a frequent and persistent pulse
by straw8erries
Summary: what if, what if —donnie/morotia.


**a frequent and persistent pulse**

 **note1** don't lie you wanted a donnie barnes/morotia m. black au  
 **note2** follow me at mintthews on tumblr  
 **note3** pretty plotless but what can u do :')  
 **listening** earth — sleeping at last

 **summary** what if, what if —donnie/morotia

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[ **the reunion** ]

Donnie's in line at the supermarket when he sees her. For a split second, he wonders if he should hide, if he should be the one to do the hiding in the first place, if she even sees him. She does. She looks him straight in the eye from her spot near the front.

There are vegetables in her basket, a package of gummy cherries, and some shampoo. It's familiar, a little bit.

The cash register's jammed and even though they're in the express line, they have to wait for five minutes before everything's running again. Morotia stands outside, near the shopping carts, with her small bag of groceries, obviously waiting for him. The reusable bag she has is white now - the old one used to be blue, like the recycling bins. He wonders who packed those away in their hasty move.

She looks at him. She has always been shorter than him, made him feel big, which was saying a lot because one of his best friends is six feet tall. ("Is that why you're dating her?" Lucas teased once, over physics homework and coffee at the university. "You tall people don't get it," Zay had grumbled in his defense, but only proceeded to tease him about some other aspect of their relationship.)

"Hi," Morotia says. She sounds distant. He catches her fingers curling around her other wrist, how her hair is longer now and how stiff her shoulders seem. It's a simple, harmless word. _Hi_. Donnie doesn't have the heart to say it back.

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[ **the break up** ]

The scene plays like this: Donnie tells her that he doesn't love her anymore. In response, Morotia doesn't scream or punch his chest or break things. Morotia doesn't do things like that. Instead, she nods and looks at him. Meets his eyes, even when he can't.

It's not like she doesn't hurt. He hears her cry about it the night before she leaves, when he's on the sofa trying to sleep but the spring digs into his back. She sobs, he shifts his position, and the spring litters bruises over his sides. Maybe they're trying to tell him something. Donnie was never good at taking hints, though.

Morotia's wheeling away her boxes when Donnie reaches for her shoulder. Pauses halfway there and settles for gesturing her over instead. Her eyes are a little puffy, but she smiles faintly at him. Amicable enough.

"If you realized you forgot something and need to come back, I'll put the key in the mailbox," he tells her. Morotia shakes her head.

She exhales and rubs her nose, like it is runny. It isn't. He knows because he watched her like a hawk last winter, when Maya gave her a cold that lasted for two weeks and became pneumonia. "There's no need for hypotheticals, Donnie." Morotia goes back to stacking and wheeling her boxes.

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[ **a little after the reunion** ]

Donnie plucks the strings of his guitar and tries not to cough as the dust rises. Morotia bought him this guitar on their third anniversary after she taught him some chords. He never told her he didn't quite enjoy how the strings cut into his fingers, but she noticed how he never played. One thing that led to the end of them.

"How have you been?" Morotia had asked him outside the supermarket. Donnie had tried his best to remain intelligible but still came out with a sentence full of filler words that he doesn't really remember. She was frowning though, he remembers that.

He didn't even ask Morotia how she was. Plays a chord he faintly remembers. The guitar sounds extremely out of tune.

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[ **a little after the break up** ]

Donnie thinks he'll find her hair ties in the bathroom or her longer hairs in his hairbrush or her cold feet sticking out from under the blanket in the morning. They're not there. She's not there.

What if Morotia's hiding under the table? Donnie thinks when he's half awake in the morning. He groans thinking about what scheme she's up to this time. He brushes his teeth and washes his face and when he reaches for the hairbrush, that's when he remembers.

There are no what-ifs.

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[ **a lot after the break up** ]

It's a slow process, erasing Morotia from the space that used to be theirs. Now it's just his. Frighteningly calm without her strumming guitar, frightening empty without her brushing her teeth besides him in the morning.

Zay shakes his head when Donnie shows up to stay over again. They get take-out sushi and a crappy documentary on the Loch Ness. "I don't get it," he says, chopsticks balanced between his teeth. "You were the one who said everything was getting old. You were the one who ended things. Yet you show up at my doorstep saying you're lonely and you won't go out and meet someone new, either."

"You love my company," Donnie snorts. Zay sighs and puts his chopsticks down.

"Are you going to get over her?" Zay asks finally. Donnie blinks. Is that what that is?

And if so: will he?

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[ **sometime more after the union** ]

They're in the express line again. This time, the cash register is working just fine and everything runs smoothly. Donnie smiles at Morotia and lets her cut in front of him in line. She bites her lip, but he thinks she's trying not to smile. Maybe.

Morotia stands outside, little bag of groceries in her hands. "Hi," Donnie says. She furrows her eyebrows, skeptical and realistic like she's always been, wondering what he's doing. He wishes he knew.

"Hi," Morotia says back, squinting into the light. "I hope your ice cream doesn't melt on the way back."

Donnie laughs. It's a humid, sticky evening and the cicadas are chirping in the back. He has a playful glint in his eye when he asks, "What if it does?"


End file.
